When you see the sign "Welcome to Kaliningrad" it means that you are crossing the border. Sometimes the border is inside us, sometimes it is outside. And it is marked by hoar-stones. "Welcome to Kaliningrad" is a hoar-stone in the form of text. But we are interested in the concrete form.

As Kaliningrad was supposed to be a Soviet city implanted in the half-dead body of Koenigsberg, all its hoar-stones are made of Soviet concrete. It is a kind of white concrete (German concrete is much darker). It was cast into monumentalki - objects of monument agitation. Now it would be said to be "monumental."

Take, for example, Sail. Not just a sail, but Sail. With the capital letter "S." Every port city in the Soviet Union always had this symbol - Sail. There is Sail in Yalta, it is said that there is Sail in Sochi too. There are very few outstanding symbolic idea-objects, very few. Fewer than the things that are symbolized.[1]

There is also an anchor. That it stands on its butt-end reveals the fact that it was made and placed into the position by landlubber: it is peculiar to anchors to lie in the operational status, the same holds true of floors but not vice versa.

In the Middle Ages gates were symbolic boundaries. Warders, city gates, sometimes a drawbridge over a shallow ditch with a brook along the bottom. By the way, such a ditch and drawbridge were located near the Royal Gates. In Soviet times a person was welcomed by a concrete symbol. If I were a follower of vulgar psychology, I would say that a good half of them are unconcealed phallic symbols…and then three pages of latent extracts would follow. But I am not a follower, so I can state more simply: they are all varieties of welcoming (and leave-taking) stone. They are metamorphoses of the institution of city gates and the bread and salt of friendly hosts.

In general, one should understand for whom these signs stand. They are not for us, dear citizens. They are for travelers. He comes-comes-comes from far away, was his journey to our city long or short? Fellow travelers, conversations, difficulties with tickets and thoughts about how to usefully spend thirty minutes of spare time that are neither one way nor the other. In one word, travel. Traveling thoughts, chances and incidents. All this travel fuss when any new-comer can turn out to be anybody whatsoever. And with this anybody (whom any of you may become) everything that you wish and don't wish may happen to this person. "Hello, I'm a delayed traveler" - you are knocking at the last peasant hut of an unknown village asking to spend the night there…

Here comes a traveler; all this has happened to him and gradually a sense of the journey's completion grows within. He sees suburbs, then other suburbs, cars coming from the opposite direction - and BANG! A welcoming sign is looking at him. Even if it's phallic, it doesn't matter. What is more important is that a traveler is welcomed by the thing that welcomes every other traveler, coming to this city.

"Hello," the city says to him.

"Hello," replies the traveler in his mind, and he understands that his journey is nearing completion.

He is already in the city.

And his head is overwhelmed by city thoughts.

Translation by N. Shtock

[1] The House of Soviets is an outstanding concrete object, but for some reason it is not on the border but in the very center of the city. I propose that if the House of Soviets is demolished, then a reduced-scale replica should be placed at the city limits as a boundary object. It could not be any better.